


It's a Wonderful Life

by evol_love



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989), It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, It's A Wonderful Life AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evol_love/pseuds/evol_love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil Perry decides the world would be better off if he'd never been born--and is given the chance to prove it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Wonderful Life

**Author's Note:**

> For DPS secret santa :)

Neil slams the door a bit harder than necessary when he finally, finally gets home. He’d care more if it hadn’t been the absolute worst day in Neil’s life. And that is including the day he realized he had to quit acting to become a doctor to support his parents, that includes the day he and Charlie got into a fight and stopped talking to each other, that includes every little fucking thing that has gone wrong in his life.

“Neil, is that you?” Todd yells from the living room, like it would be anyone else. Neil doesn’t answer, just swears under his breath at the cold and tries to stomp the snow off his boots. 

“Daddy!” Jay comes barrelling into the entryway and flings himself at Neil’s leg, clinging to him and yelling, “It’s snowing!”

“Yes, it is,” Neil says, scooping him up and carrying him into the living room where Todd and Nick are doing something involving glitter and peanut butter on the coffee table and Emily is reading in the corner. “If that’s Howl again I’m having a word with Charlie,” Neil says. She just scowls at him and burrows further into her chair. “What’s that?” he asks, turning to Todd.

Todd lifts an eyebrow. “Reindeer food.” The ‘duh’ is implied. Nick looks up and beams.

“Dad says the reindeer will like our house best if we put this out for them,” he tells Neil proudly. 

“I see.” 

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Todd says, and Neil senses he’s about to get a talking to, and he’d really rather not. Todd gets up and kisses Neil, prompting a gagging noise from Jay, who is just getting into that stage where watching your parents--or anyone--kiss is the grossest thing in the world. Todd must see something in Neil’s eyes, because he frowns as he pulls away and says in an undertone, “What’s wrong?”

Neil just shakes his head and says, “Where’s Sylvia?” 

“Oh, she wasn’t feeling well, I put her to bed and told her if she was feeling better later she could join us for dinner,” Todd says.

Neil nods and walks out of the room again to go check on his daughter. 

“Hey,” he whispers, knocking on the bedroom door before poking his head inside. “How’s my little girl?”

“Hi daddy,” Sylvia says softly from the depths of the dark room. Neil walks in and sits beside her bed. She looks pitiful, her tiny face illuminated by her night light. 

“Dad said you were sick. Are you feeling any better?”

“A little,” she says, frowning hard and looking like that is definitely not the case. 

“You get some rest pumpkin,” Neil says, kissing her forehead before rising again. 

“Merry Christmas,” she says, coughing a little. 

“Merry Christmas.”

He closes the door behind him and is greeted by jay, who’s yelling about something again.

“Jay! Quiet. Sylvia’s sleeping.”

Jay pouts and his lower lip trembles, but Neil just doesn’t have the patience for that today. 

“When’s dinner?” Neil asks as he walks back into the living room. He realizes too late that the kids are out of the room and it’s a trap.

“What is wrong with you tonight?” Todd asks, and you know you've fucked up when Todd gets confrontational.

Might as well just be out with it. “I’m getting sued. Malpractice. I...I was going to wait to tell you but-”

“Oh god, Neil, I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s not something to be sorry about. It’s just--this could be a lot of money that we don’t have, Todd. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“We’ll figure it out, Neil, we’ll get through this. I know we will.”

“You can’t know that.” Neil sighs heavily. “I’m going out.”

“Out? Out where? It’s Christmas Eve,” Todd protests.

“I’m going out,” Neil repeats, and he goes back to the entryway to pull on his boots. He’s almost out the door when Todd runs in with a paper bag. 

“If you’re going to insist on going out tonight, at least take these.”

“What is it?” 

“The kids made them,” Todd says as Neil pulls out something completely covered in icing. 

“I repeat: what is it?”

Todd laughs. “I think that one’s supposed to be a snowman. They’re cookies.”

“Ah, of course.” 

“Oh, and don’t forget that Charlie and Steven are coming over later, so try not to get yourself hungover for Christmas.” Todd’s tone is disapproving in that Todd way that makes Neil think of his mother. 

“All right, all right.”

Neil shuts the door behind him as he steps into the brutal cold of the front yard. It’s still snowing, and he pulls up his collar as he braves it to the car.

“Sorry Todd,” he mutters as he heads out to the bar. He has a lot of drinking to do tonight.  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------  
As he stumbles out of the bar two hours later (Todd is going to be furious), he contemplates if it’s actually worth going back at all. Really, what does he have to look forward to? Angry Todd, snowstorm, and a giant fucking malpractice suit just in time for the holidays. Honestly, he’d be better off jumping off a fucking bridge.

Actually. That’s the best idea he’s had in years.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------  
The bridge is freezing, the wind whipping snow in his eyes, but it doesn’t so much matter; he won’t be dealing with it for long anyway. He gets out of the car and makes his way to the edge. The water below looks intimidating, the waves rough and choppy, and it’s got to be freezing cold. But he’s made up his mind, and he’s going to stick with it.

“Here goes,” he mutters--

\--and someone else jumps instead. 

“Shit.”

Whoever it is, they’re bobbing in the river, splashing and trying desperately to stay afloat. Jesus christ.

“Hang on,” he yells to them, already climbing down to try to fish him out. “Hang on, I’ve got you.”

He wades in--it is fucking cold--and fights the icy current as he struggles to pull the man to shore. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asks as he gets them both back to safety. “Here, get in my car, I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“Thank you,” the man says, shivering a little. Neil, for his part, is beyond frozen in his now soaking clothes. 

They climb into Neil’s car, where he cranks the heating and tries to get his teeth to stop chattering. 

“Now why would you do a thing like that?” Neil asks, as if he hadn’t been about to do the same thing.

The man shrugs. “I had to save you. Only way I could think of to stop you.”

Neil squints at the guy suddenly. “Gerard?” 

“What? Oh, no, no. I’m your guardian angel. I just picked the face of the person you most associate with goodness and love.”

“Oh, okay.”

A pause.

“Wait, what? Guardian angel?”

Not-Gerard nods. “I’m here to protect you, Neil, and you were about to jump off that bridge. What was i supposed to do?”

“I don’t know how that angel stuff works.”

Not-Gerard looks at Neil very seriously. “Neil. Do you really think the world is better off without you?”

Neil laughs. “It’d certainly be a lot easier. There would be a lot less people worrying this Christmas if I wasn’t around.”

“Do you really think they’d be happy without you?” It’s creepy how much this guy looks like Gerard. He even makes the same heart-to-heart face. 

“No. No, I suppose it would be better if I’d just never been born,” Neil decides. 

That earns him a long look from Not-Gerard, who pauses to consider before nodding with finality. “Yes, yes, I think that’s the best way to do it.” He smiles at Neil. “Wish granted. You were never born.”

“Yeah, okay,” Neil chuckles as he goes to take off his sopping coat...only to find it completely dry. “What the....”

“You were never born, Neil. You never jumped into that river, so you never got wet.”

This is really starting to freak Neil out, so he says, “I’m going home now, okay? i can give you a ride to wherever it is guardian angels live in town. Okay?” 

“That would be lovely.”

They drive in silence awhile, but as they approach what should be his home, Neil gets confused. 

“Where’s my house?”

Not-Gerard laughs at him. “Neil, I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept for you to get. you weren’t born. Never existed. That house you lived in? Torn down years ago. No one wanted it. I think they’re planning to put up a Starbucks there.”

Okay. Now Neil is in panic-mode. “If my house isn’t here, then where is Todd?”

Not-Gerard looks genuinely sad. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you, Neil.”

“And the kids?” 

“Someone else might have adopted them. I don’t know.”

Fuck fuck fuck. “Where are my kids, asshole? Where’s Todd and my kids?”

Nothing but a sad, sad laugh. “I tried explaining it to you.”

Neil sits back and processes this. “So...you’re telling me I don’t exist? Then how am I here now?”

This seems to stump Not-Gerard. “Take it up with someone else, I’m new to this stuff,” he says, a note of apology in there.

“Great. My guardian angel is new to the business and has erased me from existence. Great. Great! Merry Christmas!”

“Don’t you want to see what life is like without you? You said yourself everyone would be better off.”

“That’s true, I did say something like that,” Neil muses. “Okay. Let’s see Steven and Charlie. They’re fine, right? I mean, yeah, I helped get them together, but they would have done that on their own anyway, it just would have taken longer.”

Not-Gerard is shaking his head though, which looks like bad news. “You introduced them Neil, remember? They met at your wedding.”

Neil had honestly forgotten about that. But actually, now that he thinks about it, it’s true. Charlie had been giving him a hard time about settling down and being a family man, and Neil had just assured him he’d understand one day. And then, like a goddamn Hallmark movie, Steven had walked up to congratulate Neil and he could literally see the hearts in Charlie’s eyes. And then Charlie had moped and pined like an absolute child until Neil had finally enlisted Todd and Gerard and set them up. 

“So what does this mean for them now, then?”

“Well, Steven moved away years ago. No reason for him to stay, you know? I think he was dating someone recently, didn’t really stick though. still hasn’t found ‘the one.’”

Well. The reason for that is obvious enough. “And Charlie?” Neil feels like he’s going to be sick.

“He’s...not good,” Not-Gerard admits, wincing a little. 

“Jesus, Charlie, please tell me you haven’t screwed yourself over.” Neil curses under his breath. “Okay. Where is he. Let’s see how bad this is.”

“If you insist.”

It’s already a bad sign that Not-Gerard takes him to the bar. They walk in in the middle of a bar fight that really, really doesn't look pleasant. 

“Fuck you, Cameron!” one of the men snarls. Someone is holding him back as he lunges towards the other man, who is clearly goading him. And just as he breaks free and punches the guy in the nose, Neil recognizes him.

“Charlie, no,” he yells without thinking. Half the bar turns to look at him, but they all dismiss him instantly; presumably, people breaking up fights like this is common. Damn.

“Alright, Dalton, get your ass out of here,” the bartender shouts roughly, and someone starts to pull Charlie out. 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Charlie says, and he’s angry, angrier than Neil has seen him in a long time. He’s also really, really drunk, and Neil is really, really worried that this is a normal thing. As Neil watches, Charlie stalks out into the snow. “Merry goddamn Christmas,” he adds as he leaves.  
“Okay, so you didn’t exaggerate.” Not-Gerard snorts, as if he’s appalled by the idea that he would oversell anything. 

“No, I didn’t.”

“And Steven’s gone?”

“Yup.”

They trudge back to the car, Neil trying to wrap his mind around this alternate universe he’s stumbled into. As they climb into the car, Neil stops and thinks. “Knox. Knox is okay, right?”

“Eh.” Not-Gerard doesn’t look as pitying as he had where Todd and Charlie were concerned, but he wasn’t happy either. “He could be worse, i suppose. you’ve already seen that it could be worse.” He gestures to where Charlie had pushed out into the blizzard. “He’s still a lawyer, married pretty young. Kids, big house. he has a pretty good life.”

“What’s the catch?”

“He’s miserable.”

“Knox miserable? Now I know you’re exaggerating. Knox is one of the happiest guys I know.”

“Did you honestly think your friendship didn’t affect him? People touch each other’s lives in ways that can’t even see, Neil. When you and Knox became friends, you helped each other. You became who you are--who you were--through each other. You have to know that. You two always balanced each other.”

Neil swallows thickly. “Where is Todd.”

“Neil-”

“I want to see him. I don’t care how bad it is.Where is he?”

“He’s in the hospital, Neil.”

“Well, okay, that’s not awful, he could...that could be anything, he...what happened?”

“It’s not a little stay, Neil. He’s been there for close to five years now.”

What. “What?”

“People touch each other’s lives, Neil,” Not-Gerard repeats softly. “You helped Todd come into his own. Without you, he didn’t really have anyone. His anxiety just got worse and worse. He went to the ER a few times when it got really bad, and eventually, they just kept him there.”

“Todd.” Neil really hates crying in front of strangers, and especially strangers who have done stuff this weird to him, but it’s kind of fucking hard to help, given the circumstances. “I take it back, I take it all back, please fix it.”

“Fix what Neil?’

“The thing you did, the,” he waves his hand to indicate whatever weird angel powers did this. “Change everything back to the way it was.”

“I can’t do that for you, Neil. I’m truly sorry. All I can do is guide you. You have to make the choices.” And then he’s gone.

“Some guardian angel you are,” Neil says to the now-empty car. “I want them back, I want them all back. I want Knox being dopey and romantic and Charlie and Steven being impossible and in love and Todd, I want Todd to be okay, jesus christ, how could you do that? How could you fucking let that happen?”

Not that he was expecting one, but he receives no answer.

“I was wrong, okay? I-I matter, all right? Are you happy? I was wrong and if I could do it over I wouldn’t have ever left the house.”

The wind has picked up, but he decides to drive into town again and see if he can find Charlie. Maybe it isn’t too late, there has to be some way he can salvage this life, right? Right?

The car behind him honks and he jumps, glancing into his rear view mirror. It looks like Charlie’s ridiculously ugly vehicle, and there's the sharp pang of homesickness in it. It almost cheers him up that even in this world, someone is driving that ugly thing. 

In fact, Charlie’s driving that ugly thing. 

“Neil!” Charlie hollers out the window. “You better drive or I’m going to beat you to your own Christmas dinner.”

But that’s fucking impossible.

Without thinking about the awful storm, he parks and practically jumps out of the car, shocked at how cold the air is once he’s outside. He half-jogs up to Charlie’s car window, where Charlie looks amused. And, fuck, Steven’s in the passenger seat, smirking at him.

“Why the hell are you all wet?” Charlie asks, frowning. “Anyway, Todd’s already going to be upset that we’re late, don’t slow me down here.”

“You--you know me?”

“Neil have you been drinking?”

“A lot,” Neil nods, suddenly giddy. ‘So you’re coming to Christmas dinner at my house. Mine and Todd’s. Todd and I are having Christmas dinner.”

“Are you okay, Neil? Do you want a ride or something?” Steven asks.

“I’m fucking great, actually.” Neil grins and waves a goodbye without explanation, getting back into his own car to go home, _home_. 

“Todd!” He’s already yelling as he runs up the stairs to the front door, pulling off his coat before he;’s even inside. “Todd?”

“Daddy!” Sylvia yells, running to meet him as he walks in. 

“How’s my little angel?” he asks, grabbing her and hugging her like he’ll never let go. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” she giggles. 

“Jay? Nick?”

The boys come bounding up to meet him too, throwing their arms around him and yelling about Christmas and dinner and words Neil can’t even understand. Even Emily, still clutching her book and looking a bit sulky, comes in to hug him, a small smile threatening to break her mood. 

“Where’s dad?” he asks, looking around desperately for Todd. 

“He went out looking for you, you’ve been gone for hours,” Emily supplies. 

Charlie and Steven come in the front door then, not even bothering to knock. 

“Oh, are we interrupting something?” Charlie asks, which is fucking rich coming from him, but whatever. 

“You’re here,” he says happily and hugs them both. They, for their part, look baffled but take it in stride.

“Neil? Neil are you home?” Todd comes tearing through the front door after them, and Neil practically knocks everyone down trying to get to him. He presses Todd up against the wall and kisses him like breathing, like it’s the only thing that matters, and it is, it really is. 

“Ewwwwwww,” Jay says, and Charlie laughs. 

“That’s the spirit.”

“I love you so much,” Neil tells Todd, because he doesn’t say it enough, and he almost lost him today, and he’s still sort of recovering from that.

“I love you too,” Todd says, smiling like all is forgiven. “Neil, wait to you hear, I think I've fixed everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“The malpractice suit?”

“Screw the malpractice suit, it’s Christmas.”

Todd laughs. “But you don’t understand, I went and talked to Knox about it to see if he could help us and he told me they don’t even have a case. It’ll never hold up, it wasn’t even legitimate. Neil, we’re going to be okay.”

“We are,” Neil agrees kissing him again. He can’t help himself. 

“Merry Christmas Neil,” Todd says.

And as he looks around at all these people that he loves so much, more than anything in the world, he realizes it really, really is.


End file.
